While I'm a big fan of memoirs, they do occasionally fall flat, either in the way they are written or because there is too much that seems unnecessary. There's definitely some of the latter in this but I did mostly enjoy the authors journey.

I have read two non-fiction books about the silk road in the years that I have been reading and reviewing advance copies. Both were different, and this third provided a whole other outlook to the journey, especially given the author's mode of transport as well as her own health issues.
At the start of the book, the author spends a lot of time laying the groundwork for this to be a memoir. She talks of her previous journey and the time between the two trips as she gets terrible news about her health and the partying and the work that she does when in London. This part seemed to stretch out for a while, and I found it hard to get through, it was unexpected, and I was not in the frame of mind to read about the various kinds of people that she encountered in the city and the lifestyle that she participated in. I almost gave up at this stage (I talk of this because it might be something that might happen to other readers, too!), but I decided to give it a bit more time before I actually gave up.
I am glad I stuck with it because the emotional and mental journey that the author traces in the book once she starts was fascinating. She had near misses with regards to badly behaved people, which was somewhat balanced out with the strangers with big hearts who helped her survive the drive. The epilogue that follows the story of the journey (which took place in 1995) and how she lived with her HIV diagnosis helped put the entire book into perspective.
The book comes with photos, some of which added a layer to the narration of the place. Heather works hard throughout the journey, and although it may not have turned out the way she hoped, there is definitely a story worth telling within it.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

I had a case of travel envy when I first saw this book. I love motorcycles, but can't drive, so much for motorbike travel. But bicycle might do someday! Anyway, I just wanted the travelogue part, and there is way too much other filler. I'm sorry her time in London ended so poorly, I had to look up her homepage to see how that went. Still I'm a solo traveler, too and it's always great to read or hear about someone else's solo trips. Mine certainly aren't as ambitious as hers, though. Ended up skimming a bit (sorry) , just to read about the adventure. Not a bad read, just not the best.

Reviewing another book recently that aimed to capture an epic journey along the Silk Routes west to east, that one on foot no less, I lambasted the book for being translated from French almost a generation after it was first published, making everything almost two decades out of date. And here we have this, which conveys the mid-1990s, yet came to us in 2019. Our author, fresh (well, as fresh as you can be) from motorbiking the length of Africa south to north, wants to take her two wheels and herself along to Asia and head back down south to her native Australia. So we see her travelling through Europe and Turkey, and then across all the freshly-independent Stans, all the while nearing the Orient.

Here, however, there is a twist. For this narrative is a two-fold one, where we see the travels offset against the other story here, namely her coming to terms with having been made HIV positive. The culprit for that has to remain unknowable, but it's interesting that the devil-may-care life she finds briefly in London between journeys is given such a nasty slap in the face. Slightly awkwardly the disease's biography is given details written in hindsight, such as 'if only I'd been an Internet user I might have found drugs were coming on to the market that might have negated my being told I'd five years to live', and things to that effect. But this side of the book is actually much more interesting and richer than I'd expected.

As for the journeying, this is standard fare, but is pretty agreeable all the same. We get just the right detail about the peoples, the foods, the roads and scenery, and this is a writer who pretty much likes to say it as she feels it. This bluntness causes a few unfortunate blips – she clearly picked up the Turk's racism for Georgia by being in that first country too long – but the matter-of-fact style matches the guts needed to do such a journey in those conditions. However I would definitely agree with anyone who says there is ultimately too many pages of detail – a huge chunk where, I think I say without spoilers, that her plan A fails to materialise is just annoying in the end. But early words coming back from other netgalley readers I've seen included people who gave up on the book, or at least thought ill of the first few chapters. And I can see that becoming a trend, yet I would urge the travel reader to stick with it – it does become an intriguing journey of both the personal and travelogue kind, and people here for the exotic pilgrimage-style motorbike trek are ultimately rather well served.

Three and a half stars, however – the chunk you could excise did nudge this towards overstaying its welcome at times.

Wow! I almost stopped reading this after a few chapters. I wasn’t really getting into the first little bit
But then I kept going and couldn’t stop. I was intrigued mostly by the detail in her travels. I loved hearing about all the families she encountered.

I'm a big fan of memoirs, but they do have their flaws. Heather Ellis, having written one memoir goes back to the well in this second memoir. I didn't get very far before giving up on this one. A little too navel-gazing, and overly detailed for my taste. The tone was just off-putting to me.